


Do it for the 'Gram

by mosylu



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: College AU, F/M, Fake Dating, yes indeedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 04:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12763101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosylu/pseuds/mosylu
Summary: Caitlin meant to go home for the weekend, but finds herself staying on campus. When she runs into her best friend, she learns that there's a slight miscommunication that he wasn't telling her about.





	Do it for the 'Gram

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "You can’t just say that and expect me to go along with it" from @fouroct on Tumblr.
> 
> Today‘s NaNo prompt has some of my favorite things - fake dating, college AU, Dante being a dick … not that I like Dante being a dick but I do like characters other than Cisco recognizing it. (I know he’s dead and Cisco’s very sad, but honestly, he was a whole bag of dicks to his brother. A whole lot.) Enjoy!

The moment she saw him with all his stuff spread out over a table in the time-honored saving-a-space tradition, Caitlin felt her mood lift. Just who she’d been hoping to see. She’d sent him a text, but her phone had been acting up lately and she was afraid it hadn’t gone through.

She wove her way through the tables and dropped her bag into a free chair. “Cisco! Hi!”

His head came up. But instead of the ten-thousand watt grin that he usually flashed when they spotted each other around campus for the first - or second or third - time in a day, his face went strangely slack.

“Caitlin,” he said in a high pitched voice. “I thought - weren’t you going home this weekend?”

“I was,” she said. “Something came up and my mom had to leave town, so it didn’t really seem like it was worth it to go home for her birthday.” She shrugged, trying to look casual.

“Wow, that really sucks. I’m so sorry. Um - ” His eyes darted around. “So, see you later?”

She frowned at him. “No, I came here to eat, and I figured we could eat together. Did your brother get here yet? We could all have dinner.” He hadn’t been exactly looking forward to his brother’s visit, she knew. Maybe she could be a buffer.

“No!” he yelped. “I mean. Um. Yeah, he’s here, but we’re just gonna grab and go, like, explore the campus, so if you wanna sit down to eat like you do - ”

“If you’re going to grab and go, why are you saving a table?”

He looked flagrantly guilty.

“Cisco,” she said.

He leaned forward. “Okay, no offense, you’re my best friend and I love you, but please just go - somewhere else right now?”

Hurt rose up in her. “Why do you want to get rid of me?” Something caught her eye. “And why is there a guy by the Taco Bell waving at us and smirking?”

Cisco turned around to look back at the good-looking guy standing in the burrito line. He grinned broadly, waved back, and turned, his face falling into lines of horror again.

“Francisco Ramon, I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“Don’t hate me.”

“Getting close to too late for that,” she sniped, although she could never, ever hate him. She could be pretty mad at him for awhile, though.

He muttered, “Okay, first of all, that guy’s my brother. And second, he kind of thinksyou'remygirlfriend.”

_“What?”_

He clapped his hands, face bright. “Okay, good talk, see you Monday?”

“No!” she said. “Cisco! You can’t just say that and expect me to go along with it.”

He lifted a finger. “Point of order, I’ve been actively trying to remove you from the situation where you’ll have to go along with it.”

“If anything, that’s worse. I’m supposed to walk off and know you’re making up stories about me being your girlfriend behind my back? How long has this been going on?”

“Oh my god, I didn’t make up stories!”

“Are you saying we’ve been dating without my knowledge?”

“Look, this is how it happened, okay? I put up some pics on Instagram last month, and I just called you ‘my friend,’ I promise. My brother was the one who commented about my, um, hot new girlfriend.”

“And you agreed with him?”

“Not exactly, I just never … corrected him.” His words trailed off into a mutter. He looked shamefaced. “I’m sorry. I know it was wrong. I’m really sorry.”

She gave him a narrow gaze. “Let me see your phone.”

He unlocked it and handed it over. She didn’t have Instagram, so while she knew he’d put up some pictures with her in them, she’d never seen the pictures or the comments. She scrolled through his picture stream.

He was telling the truth about his part of the conversation, at least. His brother’s comments were all along the lines of “damn, your new gf is a hottie” and “nice work little bro” and “can’t believe you bagged that.” She made a face and handed the phone back.

He took it meekly. “And I swear to you, I was going to tell him we broke up. As soon as he got back with the food. Seriously. Actually, that was why he wasn’t going to meet you, because you went home for the weekend to get some space after our breakup.”

“Except I’m not home, I’m here,” she said. “Sitting at your table, for the past ten minutes. And he’s seen both of us.”

He drew on the surface of the table with his finger. “Maybe we were really amicable?”

Caitlin rejected that possibility out of hand. If she ever dated him and then broke up with him, there was no way she could be amicable enough to eat a friendly dinner together just a few days later.

“Look,” he said. “If you want, I’ll tell him everything. Or you can tell him everything. Really let me have it.”

She thought of the things he’d let slip, here and there, about his brother. About the teasing, about the constant one-upmanship, about how every accomplishment Cisco had ever achieved was eclipsed somehow by Dante’s genius.

She thought of the comments on the pictures. “Nice job, good work.” Okay, they were gross - _bagged that,_ like she was an elk - but at the same time, they were about the nicest thing that Dante had ever said to him. She knew what it felt like to yearn for approval from someone you loved, to have it so close you could almost taste it, to see it disappear in a wisp of smoke.

“And how long will he hold that over your head?” she asked. “If he learns the truth.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Come on. This is the same guy who still brings out the pictures from when you were four years old and thought it was comic genius to run around with your Spiderman Underoos on your head.”

“Kinda ruined Spidey for me, honestly,” he said. “Yeah, he’d bring it up forever. But I deserve it.”

“Yes and no,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Yes, it was wrong, which you’ve apologized for. But you don’t deserve the way he would treat you if he found out.” She chewed the inside of her cheek. “How demonstrative am I? As a girlfriend.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, does he think I cuddle and smooch all the time? Or do I just sometimes hold your hand?”

“I - uh - we - we never talked about that. Caitlin, what - ”

“I’m going to have to do some of that, so it’s believable.”

“What are you saying?”

She poked her finger at him. “For the next two days, I’ll be your pretend girlfriend in front of your brother.”

His mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious.”

“On the condition that as soon as he goes home, you tell him we broke up.”

“Yes,” he said very fast. “Yes! Monday. Tuesday at the latest.”

“You swear?”

“By everything I hold dear.”

She reached across the table to link her hand with his. “Okay,” she said.

He stared at her wide-eyed, his mouth a little open. She felt herself blushing. This was the weirdest thing she’d ever done, and he hadn’t even asked her to.

“So!” a big voice said. “You must be Caitlin.”

It as the voice of a person accustomed to everyone looking at him, everyone smiling at him, everyone waiting for his next word. It told her a lot about Cisco, about where he’d learned to slip jokes and quips into the conversation as fast as a knife in the ribs.

She looked up. He was _very_ good looking, and to judge from the way he carried his shoulders and his head, he’d always known it. “And you must be Dante,” she said, a little bit more coolly than a girl meeting her boyfriend’s older brother strictly should. “I’ve heard … a lot about you.”

Was that a flicker in his big, toothy smile? A hint of uncertainty that someone might not immediately adore him?

She turned to Cisco. “I’m going to get my food, honey. I’ll be back.”

“Can’t wait,” he mumbled, still a step or two behind.

She got up and circled around the table to lean down and give him a loving, girlfriendly kiss on the cheek.

“You’re an angel,” he muttered to her behind the curtain of her hair.

“You owe me,” she breathed, and straightening up, headed for the food court.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, that's not the end of it. If the right prompt comes along this month, I'll write a few more chapters of this, or finish it up after November.


End file.
